Resident Evil 7 review: A new perspective, an old house, and a return to terror

In case this “wreath” of horse carcasses didn’t make it clear, the plantation that makes up Resident Evil 7 is, you know, a little weird.

In case this “wreath” of horse carcasses didn’t make it clear, the plantation that makes up Resident Evil 7 is, you know, a little weird.

Okay, this looks more like the AirBNB listing.

Okay, this looks more like the AirBNB listing.

What, you don’t want to eat the entrails that “Daddy” made for you?

What, you don’t want to eat the entrails that “Daddy” made for you?

Okay, this looks more like the AirBNB listing.

What, you don’t want to eat the entrails that “Daddy” made for you?

Your journey in RE7 begins with a plea from this woman to find her. She’s been missing three years, you’re told at the outset… but you’re not sure why.

Capcom

Leftovers.

RE7 has long, creepy stretches between its difficulty spikes, but rest assured, you’ll see this message on occasion.

Multiple “houses” dot the game’s Louisiana property, each with unique challenges (and annoyances).

Praising Resident Evil 7 isn’t as simple as calling it “a return to the series’ roots,” though that part doesn’t hurt. Capcom has added more active, combat-heavy stuff to nearly every Resident Evil game over the past 21 years, and 2012’s Resident Evil 6 saw the core fun of the series topple over as a result.

In many ways, we’re back to the horror series’ original formula: big, old house; various collect-a-thon puzzles that unlock doors; the uneasy feeling that something’s about to pop up and get you. But there’s more. This game looks and plays differently, and it does this to emphasize something new to the series: an evil that is just as terrifying as it is on your level.

Jason. Michael. Freddy. Today, we can add RE7‘s “Daddy” to that classic horror-villain list.

Slimy, bloody, and shimmering

This present-day adventure begins with a confusing video warning to you, an Everyman named Ethan, from your girlfriend Mia: “Don’t come here.” This is confusing because seconds later, a camera sweeps over a highway and we see Ethan driving to Louisiana because Mia has sent an e-mail asking him to come get her. She’s been missing three years.

The camera eventually pulls into Ethan’s car and lands in a first-person perspective, which is how you’ll play the rest of Resident Evil 7. The opening sequence eases players into the control scheme as they walk from the car through an autumnal, sun-stricken path in the woods and, eventually, into a creepy cabin.

This sequence does not put the game’s best foot forward. RE7 has been built in a new, internally developed 3D engine, and it struggles to render convincing foliage and organic textures, so the sunny, outdoor scenes look remarkably last-gen. But this isn’t Super Mario Sunshine here. Before long, the doors slam, the lights go out, and the terror begins. That’s when Capcom’s new RE Engine flexes its muscles to great effect. The game’s slimy, bloody, and shimmering elements look convincingly terrifying, and lighting systems do well to set off the game’s creepiest corridors. (Sadly, RE Engine has occasional issues with blurry placeholder textures hanging around for too long, which will look familiar to anyone who ever played an Unreal Engine 3 game.)

While the game is launching simultaneously on multiple platforms, I cannot emphasize enough to you how much a showcase this game is for HDR effects. I’d go so far as to call the game mechanically better in HDR. When a bright light appears, it doesn’t have a fake-halo effect around it, and dark hallways contain more color and light gradation. The game is absolutely enjoyable on older TVs, but these tweaks deliver a real payoff when you’re trying to find hidden items or aim at a monster lurching at you in the dark.

RE7‘s HDR mode, which comes with welcome in-game sliders, works on all PlayStation 4 consoles (stock and Pro) and the newer Xbox One S revision. The game’s admittedly low-poly and smaller-texture makeup mean you can expect a mostly 60 Hz refresh on all platforms, so this is the rare moment where I will ever tell someone to pick a console version over the non-HDR PC build. (Correction: The PC version will support HDR; make sure your graphics card supports HDR, however. HDR-compatible consoles do simplify this process a bit, compared to having to tune the exact color-gamut profile in your video card’s control panel.)

A new perspective on old horror

How do you feel about inventory management? RE7 has plenty of it, though a universal “storage crate” system helps. Dump any items into one crate, and you can retrieve them from any other crate on the plantation.

How do you feel about inventory management? RE7 has plenty of it, though a universal “storage crate” system helps. Dump any items into one crate, and you can retrieve them from any other crate on the plantation.

Combine various items to create new ones. This lets you manage whether you want, say, more ammo or health items. Also visible here: your wristwatch, which you can bring up with a menu-button tap to gauge your health. (A red tinge around the screen will tip you off to low health during panicky moments.)

Combine various items to create new ones. This lets you manage whether you want, say, more ammo or health items. Also visible here: your wristwatch, which you can bring up with a menu-button tap to gauge your health. (A red tinge around the screen will tip you off to low health during panicky moments.)

How do you feel about inventory management? RE7 has plenty of it, though a universal “storage crate” system helps. Dump any items into one crate, and you can retrieve them from any other crate on the plantation.

Combine various items to create new ones. This lets you manage whether you want, say, more ammo or health items. Also visible here: your wristwatch, which you can bring up with a menu-button tap to gauge your health. (A red tinge around the screen will tip you off to low health during panicky moments.)

Once you’re in the house, the adventure kicks into high gear pretty quickly. Without spoiling too much, Mia’s confusing introduction soon becomes clearer, and Ethan finds himself trying to help her, solve a mystery, and save himself, all at the same time. The game almost immediately sets a good tone—and by “good,” I mean “scary as balls”—with the introduction of its bizarre, hillbilly family.

Daddy, Mama, and two kids really push the term “nuclear family” here—along with a creepy, vacant-stare grandma who shows up at just the right moments—and they may or may not have anything to do with the series’ famed Umbrella Corporation. It doesn’t matter, either way. The game doesn’t spend much energy connecting its odd events to any other games’ or films’ lore (though you can find bits of lore about this, and other family-related history, if you look around the house for pieces of text). Instead, the plot and dialogue emphasize something much scarier: this family doesn’t want you to leave its plantation.

Whether you play the game in VR or on a flat screen, you’ll appreciate the game’s many staring-in-your-eyes moments, shown off in first-person perspective. These appeals sprinkle the right amount of humanity onto these crazy family members. Here, the devil you know is scarier, because when they’re not trying to kill you, these villains try to convince you that their worldview makes sense. Acting and facial animations are up to snuff in this respect, and they’re the equivalent of a big-budget B-movie—sometimes tongue-in-cheek funny, sometimes believably manic.

By the way, this is the first RE game with a default first-person perspective. The change forces a mechanical slowdown to some extent, which contributes to the feeling that we’re back to the series’ roots. Also, say goodbye to recent games’ wide-open city and prairie environments, as scary corridors and small rooms rule RE7‘s plantation.

Expect to get into a few harrowing gunfights. You can sidestep and dodge through these battles a little bit, but typically, you’ll find yourself needing to tap the “turn around” shortcut (down on the joystick plus a button), run like hell, and find a better position. (Stepping backwards is very slow. Protip: Don’t do that.)

You’ll need to scrutinize cabinets, floors, and other nooks in the game’s houses to find boosts, ammo, weapons, and puzzle-solving items, and this controls fluidly enough. Plus, RE7 strikes a decent balance between “you need to actively hunt for stuff” and “you’re close enough, aim here to get the thing.”

Screenshots never do a “VR mode” justice, but the game essentially looks the same this way—with the obvious exception of disembodied hands floating around.

Screenshots never do a “VR mode” justice, but the game essentially looks the same this way—with the obvious exception of disembodied hands floating around.

Don’t let the floating hands trick you, though: You have to use a traditional controller, even on PSVR. RE7 has been tuned very well as a sit-down VR game, with default settings that keep nausea at bay.

Don’t let the floating hands trick you, though: You have to use a traditional controller, even on PSVR. RE7 has been tuned very well as a sit-down VR game, with default settings that keep nausea at bay.

It’s like the deer head is actually there.

It’s like the deer head is actually there.

Don’t let the floating hands trick you, though: You have to use a traditional controller, even on PSVR. RE7 has been tuned very well as a sit-down VR game, with default settings that keep nausea at bay.

It’s like the deer head is actually there.

If you have access to a PSVR kit, I strongly encourage you to give it a whirl. The game’s default VR settings are tuned very well for minimal discomfort (a welcome change after the game’s original, barf-inducing demo). More importantly, you may find aiming at the game’s lurching, stutter-stepping enemies a little easier in VR. Generally, you’re trying to blow off the enemies’ heads (series tradition!), and I struggled to tune the joystick speeds—which default to an abysmally slow and rigid pace—to match the ease of simply glancing at a head in PSVR and pulling the trigger. (RE7 returns to the game’s inventory-management and limited-ammo roots, and you do get a decent amount of bullet headroom throughout the game, should you be trigger happy. Conservation and accuracy still matter quite a bit.)

Opting for PSVR does mean occasionally suffering through uncomfortable moments, especially with PSVR’s tendency to lose your place and require recalibration. The tradeoff for these rare annoyances is clear. This horror game revels in perspective gimmickry at the right moments. A knife being held to your face; an enemy radically altering your perspective for a moment; a kill-cam moment where you deliver a final, grotesque blow—these fun moments look cool on a TV, but they are better in VR. (Plus, PSVR lets you peer in real-life space to look around a corner, and, gosh, that’s fun.)

A winning, bloody hand

You’re probably looking at about ten hours of play in normal difficulty, which is padded by a few frustrating “ugh, I just need one item” moments that block your puzzle-solving progress, along with a couple of ridiculous difficulty spikes and one overlong segment near the game’s end. In my opinion, that length is fine for such a tightly crafted single-player experience—and I think it’s fair to call this the first “full length” solo adventure for the nascent PSVR platform.

I wish I could gush about the game’s craziest moments. I could pound out five spoiler-filled paragraphs explaining how dramatic, wild, and thrillingly presented each of them were. Some floated for minutes with a lingering, growing sense of creepiness and dread; in others, panic quickly morphed into “hell yeah” and “WTF” elation. Most of them made me say, “I cannot believe this happened.” RE7‘s mechanics and perspective-shift matter as much as production values in these moments; every factor combines to make players believe that they are weak and vulnerable, always surviving by the skin of their teeth.

Maybe it’s coincidence that the indie horror-game community exploded just as Resident Evil began losing relevance as a series. It certainly can’t be a coincidence that RE7 embraces some of those games’ best qualities—particularly the weak-feeling dread from the first-person Amnesia series—but this new game also shows up just as people start to ask, “how do we do horror in VR?”